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A Religious History of American Neuroscience

By Leigh Eric Schmidt

…essentialized romantic picture of religion as mystical absorption, as immediate personal experience. Despite the institutional and monastic structures that shape the lives of monks and nuns, under the scan of current cultural assumptions, they might as well all be bearers of what William James called “personal religion pure and simple.” In other words, we have in the current popularization of neuroscientific studies of prayer and meditation a near…

Aliens To Arrive in Alabama Today!

By Ben Brazil

…ome portion of it, by offering rescue from the earth or warning us to stop destroying it. Via Goodchild, the Federation exhibits a similar concern: Friends of earth. Do not be afraid. We beseech you to TRUST that we come to bring the downfall of those who have misintentions for the well being of your planet. If we do not intervene now…as has been planned for eons of your earth time…then we fear it would be too late. Later, the Federation adds: For…

Friending Pope Benedict on Facebook?

By Kate Childs Graham

…n Paul II, Pope Benedict sent the following text message to Italian mobile phone users: “Let us go forth in the joy of the risen Lord and trusting in his permanent help.” JPII had been texting Italians with a “thought of the day” while he was still alive, so Benedict was simply carrying on this tradition. Pope Benedict has more recently used text messaging to communicate with attendees throughout this year’s World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia. H…

A Color-Blind America? Don’t Fall For The Okey-Doke

By LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant

…race until he had to—which ironically was connected to his religious affiliation with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Although he openly talked about his mixed racial heritage and how that shaped his religious, political, and cultural perspectives, he took race out of the spotlight (though we all know that race played a tremendous part of his campaign, right?). But wait a minute. There is something particularly dangerous to me about the way his campaig…

Battling for the Soul of the Democratic Party

By Sarah Posner

…instead for a “moral center.” Wallis, Sekou told me recently, is “not Machiavellian, but he’s situational. He emerges at a moment when a right-of-center religious discourse has more salience.” Rather than focus on reaching out a helping hand to the poor and lecturing them about personal responsibility, Sekou envisions a religious left organizing model to “create a space whereby the poor can speak for themselves,” which sounds like Obama’s earlier…

An Immigrant’s Tale: The Pull of the Homeland

By Shabana Mir

…igiously recommended; driving over is a distant second). If you were Malaysian or Indonesian or some other nation where women made a habit of attending mosques, you’d find women at the mosque. As an instructor (of English) at an Islamic University in Lahore, I learned to love attending the Friday prayers at the local large mosque, something my mother had never known. On Fridays, many of us wouldn’t even go to work at all or for very long. Once we’…

Religion at Decade’s End

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…of great substance, and great moment, in that astute observation. As William E. Connelly observes in his important new book, Capitalism and Christianity, American Style, one of the most striking features of a contemporary Religious Studies department is its easy acceptance of permanent pluralism as the necessary starting point for religious reflection. It’s easy to miss how new, how important, and how startling that starting point really is. Gon…

‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

By Matt Recla

…ma unfold in Haiti, and feel it here in Miami, the home of the largest Haitian Diaspora in the United States, I cannot help but think of another earthquake, another country. In 1976 a 7.5 earthquake devastated Guatemala, leaving 23,000 dead and over 50,000 injured. My husband, a child at the time, has told me of the silence, the fear that followed this catastrophe. As a scholar of religion, I have often wondered of the theological impact of this n…

Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

By Chip Berlet

…hope will turn into movements for effective political change. We juggle social, racial, and economic issues, and we constantly are pushing back against the organized racist movement.’’ “What I am seeing as I crisscross the country is that we are in a similar period to the 1980s,” Ostendorf observes. “There is so much political anger and dissatisfaction, but I sense that it is much broader than what we faced in the 1980s. It crosses economic, class…

Making ‘The Link’: AIPAC’s New Crises

By Matthew Duss

…ouse and Senate. In an attempt to move the sanctions bills through reconciliation and onto the president’s desk, earlier this month AIPAC sent a letter to every member of Congress demanding that the US government “impose crippling new sanctions on Iran,” including “provisions barring federal contracts to companies which are investing in Iran’s energy sector.” Increased pressure on Iran was queued up to be the number one issue for the conference, w…